Depp and Cruz talk Pirates

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides may be the most anticipated movie of the year. Any time Johnny Depp gets back into a pirate costume is good times, and this time he’s joined by the charming Penelope Cruz.

Jack Sparrow (Depp) returns, this time looking for the Fountain of Youth with an old flame Angelica (Cruz). They have to ride on Blackbeard (Ian McShane)’s ship in an adventure that takes on mermaids and The Fountain of youth.

Depp and Cruz joined a press conference to discuss their sprawling swashbuckling epic. Although they shared the stage with their ensemble costars and filmmakers, most of the questions were for the heroic pirates.

Penelope, was there a lot of preparation for you, doing an action movie, and did you get to go one on one with Johnny or was that all a stunt double?

We did have a lot of preparation. We started a couple of months before the shooting started, with Rob [Marshall] and John DeLuca and our teachers, a team that they had on the other three movies.

They are amazing and they taught with patience.

So I knew most of the choreography because they put them together like choreography, almost like when we were doing Nine together. So it was very helpful that I knew most of them before we started shooting.

Then we did a lot of it together, and of course, everything was safe because of my situation then. But they were really protective at every moment and that meant so much to me.

Penelope, what was the key thing for you in terms of creating this character, the clothes or learning the sword play? And did you have anyone who inspired you in the way that Keith Richards inspired Depp?

For shooting a character a like this it really helps to have those costumes, to be in the real locations. It was very helpful that we didn’t go into a studio until after we shot already for two or three months in Hawaii.

Then they built a beach at Universal Studios and when they told me that I thought that it was my English, that I didn’t understand what they said. Then I went there and there was really a beach at Universal Studios. Then we went to Puerto Rico, to this deserted, private island and then we ended up in London at Pinewood.

But all of that helped me a lot to try to imagine what the pirate world at that time was because it’s so far from our reality to create a character like that. It’s all about your imagination and I think it really helped to be in those beautiful places.

Johnny, what are the similarities between you and Captain Jack?

We’re totally different. There’s nothing that I can relate to in Captain Jack, whatsoever. No, with every character that you play, there’s a part of you that goes into that, in terms of the ingredients of making this stew.

There’s most definitely a part of me in Captain Jack, and now, fortunately or unfortunately, there’s a great part of Captain Jack in me as well. Basically, I can’t shake him.

He won’t leave me alone. He keeps showing up at odd times. In fact, he arrived this morning when I was getting my kids ready for school. I had to shoo him away.

Do you see yourself carrying on with this role for decades?

Yeah. They’ll wheel me in. My dreads will get tangled in the wheels of my chair. I don’t know.

Sure. Interestingly enough, for me, a character like Captain Jack, you feel like you could just continue.

The possibilities are endless and limitless. There is any possibility of madness and absurdity that could commence, so you feel that, with this character, you’re never really done.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is screehning at Majestic cinema.